Relationship between nomophobia and fear of missing out among Turkish university students

Nazire Burcin Hamutoglu,Gozde Sezen-Gultekin,Deniz Mertkan Gezgin,Orhan Gemikonakli

doi:10.18844/cjes.v13i4.3464

Nazire Burcin Hamutoglu, Gozde Sezen-Gultekin + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18844/cjes.v13i4.3464

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between no mobile phobia (nomophobia) which is defined as a modern fear of being unable to communicate through the mobile phone, and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) which is known to be related with the problematic relationship with Social Networking Sites (SNSs), and play a critical role in the increased use of Social Networking Sites (SNS). The data were collected from a convenient sample of 538 university students via Nomophobia (NMP-Q) and FOMO Scales, The results show that a positive moderate level of relationship was found between Nomophobia and FOMO levels. The findings showed that FOMO level of university students predicts 41% of the total variance at the Nomophobia level. That is, when FOMO level increases, studentsâ€™ nomophobia level can be predicted from data depicting the increase.

Highlights

In addition to the classic features and possibilities provided by mobile phones, smartphones are mobile communication devices with an operating system designed by adding the features of a personal digital assistant, a product of the computer world
This study focuses on two cases with very similar symptoms, nomophobia, referring to ‘not being able to reach to information (NRI)’ and ‘not being able to communicate (NC)’ and FOMO, defined as a fear of missing out with connected friends, especially on social media, and follow them and their events
Earlier studies on Nomophobia in the Turkish context illustrated that the participants’ views on the factors of NRI and NC were above average, while the other two factors were found to be below average

Summary

Introduction

In addition to the classic features and possibilities provided by mobile phones, smartphones are mobile communication devices with an operating system designed by adding the features of a personal digital assistant, a product of the computer world. While smartphones have mobile applications that make life easier, young individuals mostly use their smartphones for social media (Gezgin, 2017; Gezgin & Cakir, 2016), which encourages individuals to become addicted and offers activities such as entertainment, communication, information exchange and multimedia sharing among young individuals (Karadag, Tosuntas, Erzen, Duru, Bostan, Sahin & Babadag, 2016). All these are driven by the ability of social networks to offer easy and quick access to real-time activities for learning, socialising and entertainment (Fox & Moreland, 2015)

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